Mr888 wrote:Out of curiosity, how do the climbs out of Euroka (for those that did the NRMA Classic) and the subsequent climb out of the national park back to Glenbrook measure up against these streets mentioned. I've ridden some of the roads mentioned but find that the climbs out from doing the Woodford trail tougher.

if you want some steep climbs, ride back to woodford, some of them are over 20%, throw in a very loose surface, some rocks, boulders and ruts and it makes for an interesting climb

or if you real feel you have been bad lately throw in St Helena's out and back...now that is some sweet wheel destroying ride!

C'mon guys, I can't believe you guys haven't thought of New South Head Road, from Rose Bay to the Gap.
all that winding and steepness.
you'd get better steep roads out in the ranges though, blue mountains or calga,

grantos wrote:C'mon guys, I can't believe you guys haven't thought of New South Head Road, from Rose Bay to the Gap.all that winding and steepness.you'd get better steep roads out in the ranges though, blue mountains or calga,

grantos wrote:C'mon guys, I can't believe you guys haven't thought of New South Head Road, from Rose Bay to the Gap.all that winding and steepness.you'd get better steep roads out in the ranges though, blue mountains or calga,

Dosen't get close in my vote

yep, i agree....nowhere near.

i cant think of any streets in Sydney like the one i was driving up in Auckland thinking about a learner driver clutch starting a manual on! must have been 15 deg +

grantos wrote:C'mon guys, I can't believe you guys haven't thought of New South Head Road, from Rose Bay to the Gap.all that winding and steepness.you'd get better steep roads out in the ranges though, blue mountains or calga,

Dosen't get close in my vote

yep, i agree....nowhere near.

i cant think of any streets in Sydney like the one i was driving up in Auckland thinking about a learner driver clutch starting a manual on! must have been 15 deg +

sogood wrote:Ok everyone. Now you that you know the nearest steep street, go and do hill repeats on them. 5 is a set and do 2 sets every morning!

What morning do you want to do Wallace st with me?

hey Mike, the climb back out of National Park that we would ride in on for the Gong ride, whats the length and incline on that sucker ? Curious also the climb back up to Stanwell tops that we go down on the Gong ride...

Any ideas ?

Pete

The one that comes out at Waterfall has some steep bits, but its broken up by the false flat in the middle. The first 2kms is a constant 8% from memory. The last km after the false flat is steeper. The Garmin registered as high as 12%.

The climb from Audley up to the Loftus entrance, or from Audley up towards the Bundeena turnoff seem steeper, but Im yet to sus it out with the Garmin.

sogood wrote:Ok everyone. Now you that you know the nearest steep street, go and do hill repeats on them. 5 is a set and do 2 sets every morning!

What morning do you want to do Wallace st with me?

hey Mike, the climb back out of National Park that we would ride in on for the Gong ride, whats the length and incline on that sucker ? Curious also the climb back up to Stanwell tops that we go down on the Gong ride...

Any ideas ?

Pete

The one that comes out at Waterfall has some steep bits, but its broken up by the false flat in the middle. The first 2kms is a constant 8% from memory. The last km after the false flat is steeper. The Garmin registered as high as 12%.

The climb from Audley up to the Loftus entrance, or from Audley up towards the Bundeena turnoff seem steeper, but Im yet to sus it out with the Garmin.

Pete, apologises that I didn't see you post before.

Perhaps the question is which hill is the hardest to climb. Anyway back to the RNP topic. The biggest hill in RNP is riding out of RNP to Waterfall. Technically I'd say that going out of Audley heading south will be the hardest for many riders. The hill that hurts me the most is Audley exiting the park south, the reason been that I've done 10 more K's going in that direction but probably it was all the high speed stuff before and after flat rock.

I have mapped this but my non maths brain can't work out the percentage - can anyone help??...

I downloaded the elevation data, and knocked up some calcs in Excel. Working out slope every 10 m gives some ridiculous values (>50% slope) which are probably due to errors in the elevation data - which I suspect is SRTM3 derived. That has a 90 m grid - so trying to measure slope over anything less than 180 m isn't mathematically valid. I'm not an expert on SRTM3, but I believe it interpolates points within the 90 m grid - a mathematically educated guess, if you like.

Additionally, your route points diverge 5m or more from the road in places and could be picking up an embankment, or somewhere down the side of the fill the road sits on.

You can average out these errors by taking values some distance apart over 180m- but really shouldn't read too much into it.

Working out slope over the previous 250 m still gives values over 33%, and shows quite a few sections over 20%. 33% slope is not a road - that's a rollercoaster !

If you work out the slope over the previous 500m, the maximum is 21%, and only two sections are over 20%.

From beginning to end (4.8 km), the average gradient is 6%, and that's still pretty challenging stuff. My heart rate max's out just thinking about it.

If you really want to know, you need to get someone out there with a GPS to log the elevation data more accurately - but even that might be difficult in the steeper sections where there's a decent tree canopy.

If you're a maths genius, you can do the reverse and figure out what power output you'd need to achieve a certain time.

Jim

MS Excel > Tools > Solver.

FamilyGuy might have made a typo.

The formula gives the power for a certain time. Solver can take you the other way, and figure out the time it will take if you have a certain power (or solve for any of the other variables). For the more excel challenged, Solver is an excel Add-in (go to Tools/Addins to get it).

WombatK

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us -Jerry Garcia

And closer to home Georgiana Terrace in Gosford (the bit that runs off Henry Parry) is just plain dumb, my car doesn't even like it in first.

I think Arden St North from Dolphin St, just North of Coogee beach, is longer and even more fearsome. The gradient doesn't really kick in til you pass Bream St.

If you want to check this out, don't bother looking in Google Earth for elevations, or looking them up on http://mapmyride.com - the SRTM3 data for elevations doesn't work very well around coastal areas or places where there are steep changes.

But here's a way you might be able to estimate road steepness. Turn the Google maps streetview (as per link above) using the 90 turn arrows until you looking at right angles to the road. If that's parallel to the gradient, look for the angle that vertical posts, such as power poles, make to the ground - choosing one that extends to car-roof level (where the google map camera was mounted). In the case of Arden st, there's a cutting with a fence that makes angle measurement a snap. I found it reaches about 12 degrees, or approx 21% (near what google streetview labels as 174 Arden St).

If you want some hill challenges, there's more north between here and Bronte Rd. Bronte Rd from the beach west to where Leichardt St joins it is also seriously difficult - averaging about 8% over 1 km, and streetview photo measurement shows a few places around 17% or so.

Anyone living around here would find plenty of use for granny gears. If you're not too sure if your heart is up to it, Prince of Wales Hospital is nearby and has an excellent cardiac unit.

Lining up posts on Greenwood Ave Streetview indicates a gradient around the 20% mark too, so yes, it is steep - but shorter than the Arden St or Bronte Rd climbs.

It's a bit like Cronin Ave, Penshurst also around 20% for about 120 to 150 m - my poor mum pushed myself and 2 siblings up and down this hill to get shopping from Hurstville when we were newborns, and from 2 years on I walked it regularly. The hills on the Hurstville side of King Georges Rd are also a fair climb.

34 Wattle St, Bowen Mountain is, however, far more fearsome than any of the above. Lining up the posts indicates it's around 20%, and I think that's steeper than any part of Bowen Mountain Road. What makes it more fearsome is that to get there you have to climb constantly from Richmond (about 14 km away) - and you're at an elevation close to 420 m.

However, it's 22km from the nearest cardiac unit (Nepean Hospital) and 14 km from the ambulance station . While it might be a great place to train Cadel Evans' successors, it could not be fairly considered part of metropolitan sydney

WombatK

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us -Jerry Garcia

My cousin lives in that area. Is it actually safe to cycle on that road, the road is quite narrow and there's some blind corners. That whole section around Serpentine Ln and Wattle St looks fairly evil. So Wattle st is even worse?

Just googlemapped georgiana terrace Gosford and you can see it's steep but the streetview car didn't go up there... maybe it couldn't!

Henry Parry Drive in Gosford is a good long hill too, haven't got my protractor here at work but 198 Henry Parry Drive gosford and you can see footpath railings. OK so this hill has beaten me, but I'll keep trying, maybe one day when I'm fresh rather than having been out for an hour first.

I find the curving hill on Queens Park Rd up to Charing Crossing pretty tough, short but steep and curves.
Arden St is pretty tough, agree it is dangerous due to traffic. You can take the road before Arden (away from the beach) and wind up, it ends through a little lane way whick is pretty steep at the end. I have a Cell Victor and use as many gears as possible!!!

Did Stanwell tops the other week, that was hard, I think after the ride there through Waterfall & Otford make it all that harder too.

I suspect there are council reg's around this sirt of thing here though?
I used to live on the sunshine coast, never cycled it, but Somerset Drive in Buderim is a MASSIVE hill, steep and fairly long. The cars used to struggle up there. My old man owned a house 3/4 of the way up and when he was doing tri's I think he rode it a bit.

I have done a little work with my GPS on Bowen Mountain road yesterday, and found I need to correct my guesstimate above.

The mountain road is steeper than any of the other places mentioned. I used Oziexplorer to log points every 10 m, and found that the GPS accuracy was variable due to trees obscuring sats at various points. Nevertheless, the graph below shows the elevation profile, starting from 2 Bunya Cres, taking Bowen Mt Rd down to Grose Vale Rd, then coming back up the same roads to Bunya Cres and on to 1 Lieut. Bowen Rd (the highest point) - then back down via Bellbird Cres and Wattle St.

The graph includes 1 in 8 slope lines as a guide to the slope, and shows both the gradient over 10 m and averaged over 90 m.

The climb is murderous averaging 1 in 16 (6.25%) over 5 km The worst part is around 20 to 34 Wattle, where it reaches around 1 in 7 (or 15%) and has a couple of 10 m stretches near 18%.

After a bit of googling, I found a number of rural councils have road standards that require slopes to be no more than 12.5%. Up to 15% is allowed on private driveways - but the indication is that anything over 12.5% is considered a big safety risk for public thoroughfares.

Estimating based on angle of vertical poles is obviously not very accurate. I expect that all the other examples I cited will turn out to be somewhere between 10 and 12.5% slopes. Still way outside my capability - I cheated by carting my GPS up Bowen Mountain in my car

RobS wrote:My cousin lives in that area. Is it actually safe to cycle on that road, the road is quite narrow and there's some blind corners. That whole section around Serpentine Ln and Wattle St looks fairly evil. So Wattle st is even worse?

By sight Wattle St seemed worst, and the GPS agreed. However, I did only one pass on Wattle St, and elsewhere there was considerable variation in elevation and gradient readings on successive runs (in opposite directions). It's plausible that the gradient is more like 12.5% rather than the 15% values I sampled. See this Google Earth Route for a full log of what my GPS saw - if you'd like to study the GPS samples closer and see how erratic they get.

Bowen Mt Road is quite narrow, has no shoulders, so it is pretty evil, and traffic was surprisingly unsparse for such an end-of-the-road township. I'd take my hat off to anyone attempting it - particularly if they ride all the way up from Richmond - it's pretty much a constant uphill climb.

Edited: 30/08 - added KMZ file.

Last edited by wombatK on Sat Aug 30, 2008 7:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.

WombatK

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us -Jerry Garcia